Lily Allen Agrees With You, Thinks You Should Pay For Music

Especially Hers - Or You'll End Up Listening To Simon Cowell Puppets 15/09/09

A few days ago, we brought you news of the Featured Artists Coalition - an organization that campaigns for the protection of performers' and musicians' rights.

The group, made up of the likes of Blur, Radiohead & Pink Floyd, want the UK government to stop putting the thumbscrews on "music pirates", because:

"File sharing is like a sampler, like taping your mate’s music," according to Ed O’Brien, guitarist with Radiohead;

Filesharing "is an incredibly positive thing for the music industry," according to Blur's Dave Rowntree; and

"File sharing means a new generation of fans for us," according to Pink Floyd's Nick Mason.

The story generated a lot of discussion, with many voicing opinions like that of reader Kevin Nolan of Dublin:

Under no circumstances, ever, should anybody 'give away' their creativity for nothing - its demeaning and devaluing their efforts - and for these fat cats to propose so is nothing short of an outrage.

Lily Is Here

Now Lily Allen has spoken out on the topic, suggesting that, sure, filesharing is fine....when you're old and rich and sell out arenas:

Music piracy is having a dangerous effect on British music, but some really rich and successful artists like Nick Mason from Pink Floyd and Ed O'Brien from Radiohead don't seem to think so. Last week in an article in the Times these guys from huge bands said file sharing music is fine. It probably is fine for them. They do sell-out arena tours and have the biggest Ferrari collections in the world. For new talent though, file sharing is a disaster as it's making it harder and harder for new acts to emerge.

She adds:

You don't start out in music with the Ferraris. Instead you get a huge debt from your record company, which you spend years working your arse off to repay. When you manage to get a contract, all those pretty videos and posters advertising your album have to be paid for and as the artist, you have to pay for them. I've only just finished paying off all the money I owe my record company. I'm lucky that I've been successful and managed to pay it back, but not everyone's so lucky. You might not care about this, but the more difficult it is for new artists to make it, the less new artists you'll see and the more British music will be nothing but puppets paid for by Simon Cowell.

Lily is right. I thought about this yesterday, after having read about Floyd and other UK acts claiming that they would be hurt by anti-piracy laws.

Well, maybe they WOULD be hurt. And I don't care. I stopped listening to Pink Floyd after their (excellent) 1986 album "Momentary Lapse of Reason." I never had a thing for Radiohead, and most other big UK acts (Coldplay, U2, et cetera) leave me feeling, well, cold.

I have had it with this whole "live music is king... recorded music should be FREE so that we can all enjoy the spoils of the Internet revolution!!!" Where I grew up, you paid for music -- or you got taken to the back room at Strawberries to call your parents -- AFTER THE POLICE HAD BEEN NOTIFIED.

If you think that this is a joke, then you are obviously either too young or too stupid to care. Or both. We all need to start understanding that music requires work. Great music requires a TON of work. And work SHOULD = $$$ -- NOT "free for everyone."

Thank you.

15-Sep-09 06:05 PM

fight mp3 Said...

Sorry Lilly but if you are so dump to sign a contract with a record label, that does not care for you aka letÂ´s you pay the bills then you donÂ´t DESERVE any better.

As a hint: you can have your album up at iTunes for $100 a year. This works for thousands of independent artists.

And another one for you: there is a very simple equation that sells your music: "connect to Fans + give them reason to buy = Cash"

This is not about paying or not for music, itÂ´s about artists who think the world OWES them for making music.

This is not the case.

15-Sep-09 07:44 PM

Radiophobic Said...

See, the problem with the music industry isn't file sharing, its the labels. She is complaining about being in debt to them. The world has taken a paradigm shift insofar as to music distribution, and the only people who don't seem to get it are the record labels, and those who choose to live under them.

In ten years time, labels will be an anachronism. People will still be wanting good music, and artists will still be able to make a living off of it. They just won't have a syndicate scheming practically everything off the top.

15-Sep-09 08:04 PM

JDonahue Said...

I'll echo the sentiment that Lily's problem isn't piracy, it's the fact that she's approaching the industry through the old mammoths that can't keep up with the times. She's on the wrong side of the revolution and she has no one to blame but herself.

16-Sep-09 02:13 AM

Aaron Said...

Lily is right. She's a musician not a T-shirt designer, so she should be able to make money from her music and not advertising overpriced shirts.

16-Sep-09 08:40 AM

"The Man" is you Said...

What's worrying here is there's a mindset of people who are eager to believe this social meme that if you go into the business yourself instead of slave to a record company you'll reap the benefits. Unfortunately in the real world all the small fry get hit by piracy and sharing also, the sharers just use the large record bosses as their justification.

What's even more worrying is this carries over to other industries like computer games, people will even steal in mass numbers a game download that only costs 57p, something most pirates 5 years ago would avoid when they still had some real social justification.

16-Sep-09 08:45 AM

Radiophobic Said...

Artists are going to find its easier to make money through licensing than it is through albums. Nearly every 'real person' I have read from or met that actually makes money off of music says that exact same thing.

Despite whether or not you believe that, I think its pretty obvious the only way you are going to stop illegal filesharing is by stopping the internet. Artists and labels are going to need to find a different model or else they aren't going to be able to survive.

Using the Simon Cowell example, do you think he makes most of his money nowadays off of album sales? Honestly, I don't know the numbers so I can't say for certain. But would I venture to guess that most of it is through television. In any event, he is making a killing because he has figured out a different model for music distribution that doesn't require record sales to produce a profit.

17-Sep-09 04:39 AM

Radiophobic Said...

I am going add that I don't condone illegal file sharing, I think artist should be able to make a living off of music. Its just kind of hard to argue that its a fact of the life now. Unfortunately this is a good example of Darwinian economics at play. You can fight against evolution all you want, but it doesn't change the fact that it is happening.

17-Sep-09 04:57 AM

brain Said...

she looks cute

24-Sep-09 09:10 AM

Kelly Allen Said...

It's a tricky one this. I understand that artists are losing money through file sharing but I have no idea how they are going to stop it. It's no different to borrowing your friend's CD and burning a copy but people's music collections are much larger these days because of file sharing. When I was a teenager we used to tape the top 40 off the radio, tape friends albums etc. Purchasing an album was a much bigger deal. You would save up, go to the record store and listen to the album in the booth loads of times before you finally parted with your money. Then when you got the album home you devoured it. You knew every note, every word and every inch of the artwork. Today music seems so much more disposable and the quality isn't there anymore. It's churned out so quickly and albums often only have a couple of good tracks. I don't know, but I would imagine that file sharing has forced artists to go out and perform live more than they used to. If you discover an artist through file sharing you may then go and see them live or even buy the CD if you love it...so file sharing then benefits them. Lily's objections seem to stem from the fact that she is still in debt to the record company so maybe that is where the problem lies.